College basketball is not the only place where old ideas refuse to die. The financial markets are full of old ideas that simply refuse to go away. For example, we simply must have a bear market because one is supposed to happen every five years. Over the history of the stock market, we typically get a bear market once every five years. The idea here today is that a bear market must be looming because we have not had one since the 2008 financial crisis.

Long term. I have probably used the phrase a million times, as has anyone who has been in the financial world. No matter how one says it, long term, long haul or long run, it is a phrase that has different meaning to different folks. Let’s face it, time is relative…

Freedom works. Why is this so hard for us to understand? It is in our nature to want to control, to believe that someone has to be in control. This theme runs through every ancient religion, and overcoming that desire to control is central to all of them. Yet capitalism and its political partner, democracy, will always have their critics.

Behold the power of compounding, when one event piles on top of another, then another. In the investing world we usually talk about compounding and how it impacts investment returns. Albert Einstein may have won a Nobel Prize for his theory of relativitiy, but when asked what the greatest invention in human history was, he said, “compound interest.”

Have you ever taken something back to a store and all the store will give you is a store credit? It is aggravating, isn’t it? You may not wish to buy anything else in that store. What you really want is your money back so you can go anywhere. With international trade, this is the way local currency works. China takes dollars. Dollars are like store credits, they eventually have to be used here if you want your value.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”— John Maynard Keynes

The University of Virginia Cavaliers are the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Champions. They defeated the Red Raiders of Texas Tech. Both teams got to the final game with a similar formula: tough-as-nails defense and patient ball control offense. In other words, they play slow. A lot of basketball fans don’t like it, and I will admit that I prefer a faster pace game myself, but I suspect that coaches Tony Bennett and Chris Beard would agree with Dean Smith who once said, “I wasn’t trying to make it a good game, I was trying to win.”

The strangest thing about the game to me – other than that it didn’t even start until after my bedtime – was the halftime commentary. I usually love the banter supplied by Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Clark Kellogg, and Ernie Johnson Jr., but after the first half in which Texas Tech did not make a single shot from the field for the first seven minutes, Kenny Smith set out to explain why neither of these teams could win the championship. You see, there is an old idea in basketball that if you have the better team then you want to play fast, and since the best teams usually win, most champions have played at a faster pace.

The idea stems from basic strategy. Dean Smith used a golf analogy to explain it and I’ll borrow from that: If I were to play Tiger Woods in golf, my odds of winning decrease with every hole we play. On any one hole, I could get a birdie and he could bogey or worse; however, over the course of 18 holes, the fact that he is much better than I am will give him an increasing advantage.

In basketball, by slowing the game down the inferior team can decrease the number of possessions, giving them a better chance of pulling off an upset. This idea is so entrenched that it has become a common belief that only lesser teams play slow and therefore slow-playing teams cannot win the championship. Kenny Smith played for Dean Smith at the University of North Carolina. Coach Smith might be famous for the four corners delay game, but most of his teams played fast. He was a strong believer in the fast break, and frankly usually had the better team so wanted to speed up the game.

I understand the slower game of UVA and Texas Tech not being Kenny Smith’s cup of tea, but as he sat there arguing that no team can win a championship playing the way that both teams in the championship game play I was wondering what in the world he was thinking? One of these teams had to win. They were the only two teams left, and by the way, they were the only two teams left because they beat everyone they played in the tournament. I don’t know if this is the future of college basketball, but I do know this: the old idea that slow teams cannot win championships was just proven false.

College basketball is not the only place where old ideas refuse to die. The financial markets are full of old ideas that simply refuse to go away. For example, we simply must have a bear market because one is supposed to happen every five years. Over the history of the stock market, we typically get a bear market once every five years. The idea here today is that a bear market must be looming because we have not had one since the 2008 financial crisis.

Before I debunk this idea I must freely admit that I use the five-year average all of the time. Many of you already know this because we have had that conversation. How long should we give a manager to know if she is doing her job? At least five years, because that is the average length of a full market cycle, with the cycle being bear market, recovery, bull market, and then another bear market.

Five years is, however, an average, much like the typical southern summer thunderstorm lasts 20 minutes. Anyone who has lived in the Southeastern United States knows this. However, this does not mean one can simply set his watch for 20 minutes when the storm begins and then safely walk outside. It is not that simple.

This market does not have to go down simply because it has been so many years since it has happened. For one thing, the very idea that the market has not experienced a significant downturn since 2008 is misleading. European stocks suffered their setback in 2011. Most stocks in the S&P 500 suffered in 2016 as only the FANG stocks kept the market above water.

The downturn that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2018 was technically a bear market, which by definition is a market down more than 20 percent. Some are already dismissing it, however, because it lasted such a short time. Granted the only real issue was this very idea that a bear market must happen simply because it hasn’t.

Similarly, there is an old idea that the economy as a whole must go into recession because a recession is supposed to happen roughly every five years. The market cycle mirrors the economic cycle, although the market is usually ahead of the actual economy. Again, the idea is that there is a cycle where business does well, they expand, then they over-build and the economy slows down to adjust. After the recession, there is a recovery and we do it again. The last recession in this country ended officially in 2009. We are overdue based on the idea that this average time span must hold.

Again, the problem here is that real life is just not that simple. In our current circumstance there is a question of when the last recession actually ended. Several years after the technical end of the recession, surveys showed that most people still thought we were in a recession. This is because the “recovery” was the most anemic recovery we had experienced, at least since the Great Depression. The rate of growth was half our normal average, let alone the normal recovery boost. So yes, the recession was over, but it did not feel like it.

Which matters more: the academic definition of a recession being two consecutive quarters of negative growth and the end being a return to positive growth, or what real people feel in their pocketbooks? If most Americans thought we were still in a recession, then I’m of the opinion that we were in a recession. After all, economics is mostly psychological. This does not mean it isn’t real, but it does mean that what actually happens is hugely influenced by what we thought would happen.

For example, if people become convinced that a certain bank is on the verge of collapse, then it will almost certainly happen. It matters not that the bank was perfectly sound when this belief took hold. People believed the bank was not safe and therefore started withdrawing all of their assets from the bank. Enough people withdraw their assets and all of a sudden the bank is actually in trouble – the self- fulfilling prophecy. So, I’m willing to go along with the view that we have not been out of the recession nearly as long as the experts say.

However, even if they are correct, it is clear the economy has not grown in total nearly as much as it usually does in a full cycle. If we are growing half as quickly, does it not seem logical that the cycle would take twice as long?

Of course, even if that were not the case, these timelines are just averages. We do not go into a recession simply because it is time; we go into a recession because businesses and individuals have expanded too rapidly and need to correct that by temporarily ceasing growth or even shrinking it. To use an example many would understand, a recession is like a new homeowner being “house-poor.”

Most homeowners have been there. We fell in love and bought the house which was, in reality, just out of our price range. Now we have this great house and no money. So the annual vacation gets cut. We fire the lawn service and reintroduce ourselves to the lawn mower. We make excuses for not going out to dinner with friends. Time passes, raises eventually come, or maybe we can refinance and things improve.

So, have we bought too much house? There really are no signs of this being the case. The key I always use is the employment situation. Our unemployment rate is at 3.8 percent and has been below 4 percent for longer than any period in our country since the 1960s. Not only is unemployment low, but wages are growing faster than the rate of inflation. More importantly, they are growing faster on the lower end of the scale. This does not make for an economy which is about to go in reverse.

Another old idea is that the Fed raising interest rates will slow the economy. The truth about interest rates, like so many of these ideas, is more complicated. The Fed raising rates early in an economic expansion is usually a good thing; it means the economy is growing again. The economy and the stock market both tend to grow as interest rates rise. It is when rates peak that the economy and the market start to head in the opposite direction. So now our old ideas are related: what one thinks about the Fed’s raising rates is directly related to how close she thinks we are to the end of the cycle and another recession. Late last year all we heard was that we are late in the cycle. If that is true, then the Fed raising rates is bad. But, is it true? One would not know it now. We seem to be still chugging along.

Ultimately all these ideas persist because of the fatal flaw of economics as a science. In the hard sciences, the scientific method requires a control – this group gets the experimental treatment while this other group gets a placebo. The treatment works or it does not. There is no control group in economics. The truth is that we don’t know how much Fed policy influences the real world. Many believe, myself included, that the actions of our Fed in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis saved us from a far worse outcome. However, there is no way to actually know that. We can- not set up an alternative universe in which the Fed did nothing. All we can do is look at history and attempt to learn as much as possible from it. The problem with that is every time it is a little different: the Fed raised rates and the market dropped in the 4th quarter of 2018; the Fed softened their talk and the market rebounded to begin 2019.

At the same time, the trade negotiations with China looked bleak in the Fall of 2018 and much better in the early days of 2019. Was the market responding to the Fed or to trade talks? This is the problem with these old economic ideas – they are impossible to prove and just as impossible to disprove.

What is an investor to do? Investing is much like basketball in the sense that there may be differing styles, but some fundamentals are constant. Some teams play fast and some play slow. Some investors seek rapid growth and some seek steady income. All great teams play defense. All great investors are risk-averse. All great teams have an identity and they stick to it. North Carolina plays fast, Virginia plays slow, both have now won championships in the last few years. They are who they are. All great investors have a process and they stick to that process through booms and busts. All understand that it doesn’t really matter what others say or think; an idea, old or new, is only good if it works.

Warm regards,

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~Old Ideas

Long term. I have probably used the phrase a million times, as has anyone who has been in the financial world. No matter how one says it, long term, long haul or long run, it is a phrase that has different meaning to different folks. Let’s face it, time is relative. An hour and a half car ride is really not that long to me, but don’t tell that to my eight-year-old daughter, who within twenty minutes will begin the “Are We There Yet?” ritual, shortly followed by, “This is taking forever.”

Most of our readers know that I coach youth basketball. My son’s practices last one hour, and that hour goes by in what seems like ten minutes. For a few years I would help with his baseball team after basketball was over; those one- hour practices seemed to last days. Of course, as any parent knows when one has children around, the days become increasingly long and the years proportionately shorter. This is a phenomenon that I have to admit I do not fully understand but must admit is true.

Different people even have different ideas of what the term “on time” means. I know people to whom anything less than fifteen minutes early is considered late, and others who figure if they are there within fifteen minutes of the start that is good enough. Once when I was five minutes late to a client meeting, one of the committee members let me have it. How dare I keep them waiting? I have been ten minutes late to a client meeting, apologized, and been told that I was being silly for apologizing. People just see time differently.

With so many differences, how are we to define what it means to be long term? I realized this a few years ago while meeting with a client. I was explaining that he had a “long- term” time horizon, and he quickly corrected me, saying that he only had ten years before retirement. I quickly realized that his idea of long term and mine were as different as my idea of a short road trip and my daughter’s. I live in the world of the market, and he lived in the real world.

In the real world, things just do not change as fast. Markets may drop twenty percent from October to December, but reality does not change that quickly. In my world, where things do happen very quickly, the idea of long term keeps shrinking. I personally define long term as a three- to five-year time span. Some would define it as short as a year. I know a stock trader who defines it as six months.

Regardless of definition the term is too often misused and used as an excuse to bury one’s head in the sand during times of distress. “I’m not looking, because I am in it for the long term.” Many are probably familiar with the quote I opened with from Keynes. However, most have probably never read the full quote in context, “But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.”

Too often the long term is pulled out by those who do not know what to do and therefore say just hold on and do nothing. Unfortunately, doing nothing is still doing something. Please don’t misunderstand: We should make investment decisions based on the long term, and sometimes doing nothing is exactly the right thing to do; I’m just pointing out that one should not use these terms as crutches when things get a little scary.

So, what should a prudent investor do when the market gets stormy? It always starts with the fundamentals. For us, there are three fundamental rules to prudent investing:

1) Prudent investors invest from the bottom-up.

This means we analyze each individual investment on its own merits as opposed to trying to guess where the market is headed at any particular moment. Individual investments often start to look expensive before market downturns. No one can time the market, but one can pay attention to how expensive an investment is becoming.

In October of this past year, Iron Capital increased its allocation to bonds and decreased our allocation to stocks for all of our clients who have a blended portfolio. We did not, and do not, have a crystal ball. We did not know or expect the market would drop as it did late in the year. We did know that stocks were getting expensive and bonds looked more attractive than they had in many years. This is investing from the bottom-up.

2) Prudent investors are absolute return-oriented.

This means prudent investors do not get involved in the dangerous game of competitive investing, always comparing results to an artificial benchmark or one’s boastful (un-truthful) neighbor. Prudent investors don’t chase Bitcoins because they are the hot item in 2017, and therefore do not experience the 80 percent drop in price when hot items suddenly become cold, as Bitcoin did in 2018. Of course, when market values drop it is almost impossible to maintain a positive absolute return. I know that no client likes to hear that they lost much less than they otherwise would have, but losing less when things are down is often the key to success over three- to five-year periods.

There is another potential issue for the absolute return-oriented investor: Outside factors, such as taxes, can impact some investors. If one has taxable investment accounts, then she may treat downturns differently. Gains on investments are taxed at capital gains rates. An investor does not pay taxes on gains until the gain is realized. In other words, if she owns a stock that goes up in value, she is not taxed unless she sells that stock and pockets the gain. These gains and other income up to regulatory limits can be offset with investment losses. Of course, losses work the same as gains in the sense that one must actually sell the investments to realize the loss.

Many investors dislike selling investments when they are down. They want to hold out for – you guessed it – the long term. There are two things to realize here: First, taxes will impact your absolute return, and the tax deduction from realizing a loss has significant value. Secondly, one does not have to make money back the same way he lost it. He could invest in a replacement. If he owned an airline, then he could invest in another airline. After thirty days he can buy back the original investment and still maintain the tax benefit of the loss. Doing this in a disciplined way can have a very positive impact on the after-tax investment results of a taxable portfolio.

3) Prudent investors are also risk-averse.

This does not mean that we can magically avoid the fluctuations of the market, but prudent investors are always biased toward high-quality investments. They wish to invest in companies that will stand the test of time. They are also very aware of price. Real risk is paying more than an investment is actually worth. This is how permanent losses of capital occur. The pressure to pay these elevated prices flow from competitive investing and the feeling of missing out on something.

These two forces, the desire for quality and price sensitivity, are often at odds with one another. The highest quality companies tend to come with the highest priced stock. After all, we are not the only ones who recognize quality. However, the stock of these high-quality companies tends to drop right along with everything else when the market sells off. In fact, these companies will frequently lead the sell-off; they are the easiest to sell, and professional investors being forced to sell often sell what’s easiest first.

This creates a classic baby-out-with-the-bathwater scenario. Market selloffs are the best time to selectively and prudently go shopping. Prudent investors use these opportunities to buy the stock of companies whose prices are usually too high for their taste. This is different than just blindly doubling down, as the gamblers would say. There must be careful analysis done to assure that these companies and their business are as strong as thought. One also has to be careful not to get too excited too soon. Selloffs can last longer than expected, and it is difficult to know when they are over. Prudent investors will buy little by little, building their investment over time. Downturns are opportunities.

Ok, I know what you are thinking: This is great for those people who have a long-term horizon, but what about the investor nearing or already in retirement? When one gets into this phase of her investing life, the goal changes from growing assets to producing income. With our retirees we run an income-oriented strategy, which can be complicated to pull off but is very simple in concept. We want to produce the income needed through actual income payments while taking the least amount of risk possible. The importance of this strategy comes to light when markets go down.

Bonds are the typical example of income-producing investments. Bonds are simply loans, and the interest payments on those loans represent income to the bond-holder. Many types of stocks also produce income through dividend payments. These income payments are often referred to as a percentage yield, but they are promised dollar amounts. They remain constant as long as the business itself remains sound.

When a market downturn occurs, a portfolio using this strategy will drop in value. The income strategy, however, will continue to produce the same amount of income, assuming we have done our job well in selecting safe companies. The values of these stocks will rebound over time, as will more growth-oriented investments; but more importantly, the needed income continues.

Many investors fret over the sudden market drop right before they retire. What happens if one was to retire in January of 2019? Everything looks great and then suddenly a bear market hits. All is not lost. If she follows our advice and builds an income-producing portfolio, the income yields have risen as stock prices dropped. If an investment worth $1,000 pays $50 per year in income and then drops in value by 20 percent (a full bear market drop), then that same $50 can now be produced with an $800 investment. In investment speak we say the yield went from 5 percent to 6.25 percent.

No one likes it when the market goes down instead of up, but it is the way investing works. We take three steps forward and two back. The secret is weathering the downturns well. The prudent investor doesn’t just sit there passively with his head buried in the sand; He uses it as an opportunity and deals with the actual circumstances at hand, for prudent investors know that no matter how one defines long term, that it is really just every short-term period added together. The ocean will be flat again after the storm has passed, but only the prudent skippers’ ships will still be afloat.

Warm regards,

Chuck Osborne, CFA, Managing Director

~Time Keeps on Ticking

Socialism is supposedly more popular with people under the age of 30 than capitalism. Have you heard that? There are several such polls around. The question I have for those who make such claims is very simple: Can any of those respondents define those two terms? I have my doubts.

For most of my adult life, this conversation was not necessary. Any time someone tried to attack capitalism, all one had to do was point to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the success of the Reagan / Thatcher reforms in the U.S. and U.K. One did not have to be an economic scholar to see the obvious contrast. Total collapse versus huge success, this wasn’t nuance. Most people, especially in the investment world in which I live, thought this conversation – which had taken up so much oxygen in the 20th century – was over.

I had not heard anyone even try to argue against capitalism since Bill Clinton declared the age of big government over in 1992. Then, the financial crisis hit a decade ago. We started getting bank failures, and the anti-capitalism crowd was magically brought back to life. The actual crisis was caused, as all true crises are, by a confluence of things all happening at once. This, by definition, is complicated. I tell my children this all the time, especially my son: complicated things are just combinations of several simple things. Break it down into pieces and everything becomes simple, but the whole is complex.

The long-lost big government/anti-capitalism crowd, however, had a very simple one-word explanation for the whole thing: greed. Greed caused the crisis. That explanation sold because it was simple, and it easily identified a culprit: greedy Wall Street bankers. Of course, the idea that greed explained the crisis was and remains absolutely absurd. We wrote about this at the time. There are so many holes in that argument that one could not possibly count them all, but primarily for this argument to work, it would mean that greed was somehow new. People have always been greedy, we do not live in a constant state of financial crisis. Milton Friedman said it best when he said, “Of course it is always the other guy who is greedy, we are never greedy.”

Wall Street helped the simpleton’s cause by providing anecdotal stories of incredibly greedy, and frankly often stupid, bankers. I have been in this business a long time, and most people in it do not fit that description, but those that do are ever-present. They contribute to every crisis, but they do not explain a crisis. Let me be clear: this does not excuse the mortgage banking industry or the Wall Street bankers who financed the industry. They certainly deserve their portion of the blame.

However, the crime in that explanation was that it completely exonerated a group that deserves at least an equal portion of the blame: government politicians and regulators. The oft-used quote of the “blame capitalism” crowd was that the crisis was caused by the “unregulated banking industry.” I suppose that I should have known then that the post-modernist idea of truth being whatever you feel it is had taken over our discourse. If there is an industry more regulated than the financial industry I would like to see it. Yet, I had college-educated people who had purchased multiple homes over the course of their lives look at me in all seriousness and claim that the mortgage industry was unregulated. I would ask them, “Was there a lawyer at your closing? How many disclosures and documents did you have to sign?” That is regulation. The OCC, SEC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, and various state agencies all regulate financial firms and have since at least the 1930s.

Capital requirements, which were way too low, were set by regulators. The entire sub-prime mortgage market – the source of the crisis – was created by regulatory requirements. Ultimately what caused actual failures were the investments that the banks had made with their reserves, and again, what they were allowed to invest in was determined by regulation. Yet somehow this idea of “unregulatedness” caught on, while the regulators who were supposed to be providing oversight got rewarded with more power.

This idea has somehow remained. Just in the last year I had a conversation with an individual about the sad state of our healthcare system and the high price of drugs. He told me without hesitation that it was because the pharmaceutical companies were unregulated. My mouth dropped. Then I asked him what he thought the FDA did? It is regulation that grants these companies monopolies on their breakthroughs. Yet today any industry that is unpopular is evidently “unregulated.” That word must not mean what I think it means, because the truth is the most-hated companies in America are always in the most regulated industries. Therefore, for those who keep using the word, it must not mean free of regulation.

This misinformed idea magically overnight brought back some sort of legitimacy for the word socialism. I suspect, since these supporters do not know what unregulated means, they probably don’t actually know what socialism means. Socialism is an economic system under which the government owns the means of production. The first thing to understand about socialism is that it is not, as many believe, a political theory or system. It is an economic system. Some would believe that the two cannot be separated, but that is not correct and it is very important in actually understanding socialism. Socialism’s opposite is capitalism, which is also an economic system. Socialism is usually associated with totalitarian political systems, and capitalism is associated with democratic political systems. However, there have been democratic countries who have experimented with socialism, and both the Soviet Union (in its infancy) and currently China have experimented with capitalism.

Many may be familiar with Friedrich Hayek’s most famous book, “The Road to Serfdom.” Hayek argues in the book that economic freedom is a necessary element of political freedom. (If I were king for a day this book would be mandatory reading for all high school students in America, but that is another issue.) The book was inspired by Hayek’s life experience. As an Austrian he watched Germany embrace socialism, and he understood the role this played in allowing the Nazis to establish complete control over the country. Yes, you read that correctly: The economic system in Nazi Germany was socialism. Socialism is the natural economic system of any totalitarian form of government. The official name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers Party. I know this seems strange to the modern- day, capitalist-hating young socialist to whom anyone he does not like is automatically compared to Hitler, but when it came to economics, Hitler was a socialist.

As was Stalin. The two may have been on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but from an economic standpoint, the only difference between fascism and communism is who the tyrants are. Tyranny is tyranny, and socialism is tyranny. When I was a young economics student we referred to capitalism and socialism as simply a free economy versus a command economy. These titles are perhaps more clear. Do we want an economy where we are each free to act as we desire, or do we wish to be commanded by some authority?

To me, the answer to that question is as self-evident today as it was when our founding fathers found it to be self-evident. Liberty is our defining quality as a country, or it has been. Today many are asking for our freedom to be reduced. On college campuses there are actual arguments about limiting the freedom of speech. Thankfully most advocates for such are losing, but that it is even dreamed of in this country is more than a little scary.

Of course, it is only the other person’s speech that they wish to silence. Isn’t that always the case? There is no doubt that the best political system would be a monarchy…as long as I get to be king. Similarly, socialism is great if you are part of the ruling elite who get to tell everyone else what to do. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. Hayek’s most powerful realization was that given human nature, when you place that much power in government, the type of person who becomes attracted to wielding that power is usually some flavor of tyrant. As they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But what about the less fortunate? A free world can be a cruel world, there is no doubt. I wish everyone who claims to support the ideas of economists like Friedman and Hayek actually read their work. I mean read as in word for word, not the Reader’s Digest version which made Hayek a household name. Both Friedman and Hayek argue for the necessity of a social safety net provided by government. They also pointed out potential pitfalls and certainly criticized specific programs, but both believed that a safety net was absolutely needed in any civilized society.

John Maynard Keynes is another famous economist who is often thought to be on the opposite side of most issues from Friedman and Hayek. This is because he endorsed government intervention in the economy in an effort to soften the blows of recessions. While that is true, what is often lost is the motive behind this intervention. Keynes feared that if government did not step in to thwart some crisis, then the day would come when people would begin to abandon capitalism altogether. He wanted to save capitalism, not replace it. Keynes and Friedman did disagree, but not on the superiority of capitalism: Keynes thought government should stimulate the economy through fiscal policy, while Friedman thought monetary policy was superior. In truth their differences a far more about nuance than anything fundamental. It is the politicians who possess a bumper-sticker understanding of economics that create this supposed divide.

Keynes did speak more about income redistribution. However, it is important to understand that Friedman addressed inequality in his book “Capitalism and Freedom,” which was published in 1962. His work at that time showed a direct relationship between inequality and regulation. This makes sense if one thinks about it: the more things are controlled by the government, the more one has to know how to work the system. In other words, regulation rigs the system; in fact, it is the only way to rig a system. Rigged systems prevent social mobility, and economists today have shown that there is a link between social mobility and more equality overall.

Freedom works. Why is this so hard for us to understand? It is in our nature to want to control, to believe that someone has to be in control. This theme runs through every ancient religion, and overcoming that desire to control is central to all of them. Yet capitalism and its political partner, democracy, will always have their critics. I think Winston Churchill said it best when he said, “Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried, in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…”. The same can be said of capitalism. It’s the worst form of economics, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Hopefully, all those under-30 year-olds who think they want to try socialism will come to realize that before they actually lose their freedom.

Warm regards,

Chuck Osborne, CFA, Managing Director

~Freedom

On July 19 the best golfers in the world will begin to compete for The Open Championship, often referred to as The British Open on this side of the pond. This year they are playing at a course named Carnoustie. Golf fans remember this course as the one that hosted this event in 1999, which saw one of the most memorable and painful golf finishes most have ever witnessed.

It was the 128th Open and on Sunday, a French golfer named Jean van de Velde came to the final hole with a three- shot lead. The last hole at Carnoustie is a long, difficult par four. Even with the three-shot lead, van de Velde decided to use his driver off the tee. At the time the announcers were saying they thought that was a mistake. If he simply played safe, he would be the champion.

The announcers proved to be correct. Van de Velde’s drive went well right of the fairway. In fact, he got lucky: the drive was so far to the right that it flew over a creek (they call it a burn over there) and onto another hole. Now it was decision time. He made a mistake; would he admit it, take his medicine and just get himself back into play, or would he try to undo his mistake? Van de Velde did the latter. He went for the green, and five strokes later finally finished with his three-shot lead gone. He lost in the playoff. Paul Lawrie won, but no one outside of his immediate family remembers that. The 1999 Open will always be remembered as the greatest collapse in the history of golf.

Behold the power of compounding, when one event piles on top of another, then another. In the investing world we usually talk about compounding and how it impacts investment returns. Albert Einstein may have won a Nobel Prize for his theory of relativitiy, but when asked what the greatest invention in human history was, he said, “compound interest.” He is attributed for having said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it… he who doesn’t…pays it.” In other words, prudent people save in order to purchase something. They invest their savings, and that savings earns a return, or interest. This grows their purchasing power. Impatient people borrow to buy things. They pay interest on those loans and end up reducing their buying power by paying more over time.

The compounding effect comes from the interest earned on your interest. For example, if one invests $100 and earns 8 percent over the next year, then she will have gained $8 for a total of $108. If the next year she earns the same 8 percent, then she will earn $8.64 for a total of $116.64. The $0.64 is the interest she earned on her interest. This is how money grows.

Today we use computers to illustrate this growth when we conduct financial plans, but when I started in my career we simply used something called the rule of 72. If one knows the average annual return that he will obtain on his investment, then he can divide that number into 72 and approximate how long it will take him to double his money. If he gets an 8 percent return then his money will double in nine years. It takes the same nine years for $10,000 to turn into $20,000 as it does for $20,000 to turn into $40,000. My first boss used to say that it is the last double that gets you there.

However, compounding does not only work in the positive direction. Too often we ignore the damage caused by compounding mistakes. The first mistake almost never causes insurmountable damage, it is the compounding of mistakes that leads to ruin. In investing this leads to a phenomenon known as whipsawing. Markets move in cycles, and if an investor is out of sync with the market cycle, then it becomes easy to compound that mistake. For example, stocks of banks and stocks of technology companies often – not always, but often – move at different times.

It is not uncommon for bank stocks to go nowhere while technology stocks are booming, or vice versa. So, if an investor buys the stock of a bank and it just sits there while stocks of technology companies grow, then he has made a “mistake.” Now what? Most investors will then attempt to undo their mistake by selling the bank stock and buying the stock of a technology company. Of course, most do this just in time for the market cycle to change and then they watch bank stocks grow while their technology stock just sits there. This is whipsawing. Instead of missing out once, this investor missed out twice. The mistake has been compounded.

People also compound their mistakes in financial planning. An easy example would be a person who fails to build an emergency savings fund. Stuff happens in life. Unexpected expenses will occur. It could be a health issue or a car repair. At our house this summer we have had to deal with the loss of two very large oak trees. Unexpected expenses will happen, and having an emergency fund to deal with such issues is very important.

If one makes the mistake of not having such a fund, then she must rely on borrowing money to take care of these issues. Usually that takes the form of credit card debt, which is the worst way in the world to borrow money as the interest payments are often ridiculous. This debt weighs on people. Once again, the normal reflex is to undo the mistake – this time by paying as much as humanly possible to reduce that debt as quickly as possible. This actually sounds logical, right? The problem is that if one follows this course of action then she is not building up that emergency fund, and emergencies don’t stop happening just because she is still paying for the last one. Debts start to compound, and before one knows it she is buried in debt with seemingly no way out.

Individuals are not the only ones who fall victim to compounding. Policymakers often fall into this trap. As I am writing this, The Wall Street Journal has reported on administration efforts to help farmers. Why do farmers need help? Because the administration decided to place tariffs on Chinese goods. The Chinese respond by placing tariffs on American crops. Now all of us will be paying more for anything that comes from China and we will be paying taxes to bail out farmers who can no longer sell their goods.

Policymakers do this all the time. They increase regulations and raise taxes, which makes it more expensive to run a business. This means fewer jobs are created. Because there are fewer jobs, that means there are more people unemployed. More people unemployed leads to more poverty, which leads to poverty programs, which leads to some people deciding they would rather get government benefits than hold down a job. That leads to more unemployment. It is an endless cycle which eventually leads to more and more inequality and polarization. Sound familiar?

How do we prevent compounding mistakes? Most of our readers know that when I’m not analyzing stocks I am often coaching youth sports. One of the things I learned my very first year was a clever little acronym for dealing with mistakes. C.L.a.P.! We clap for mistakes. The C stands for claiming the mistake. The L stands for learning from our mistake. The a is simply for and, and P is play through the mistake. I know what you are thinking, which is what I thought when I first heard it: How wonderfully gentle of us. No wonder colleges have to create “safe spaces.” But I was wrong. Clapping for mistakes isn’t a soft easy way out, it is hard.

It is hard on everybody, but in my experience in two different ways. Most of the kids I have coached have trouble with the C. It is very difficult for most people to ever admit that they made a mistake. We simply are hard-wired to avoid admitting that we are less than perfect. In her book “Mindset,” Carol Dweck claims that people can be put into two broad categories: we either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Fixed mindset means that one believes that talent drives performance and you are just born with talent or not. A growth mindset would say that skill drives performance, and that skill grows, and new skills can be learned.

For someone with a fixed mindset, admitting a mistake is next to impossible. That would mean that they are not good at whatever it is they are doing. It could even mean that they are stupid, worthless, etc. Obviously that isn’t actually true, but that is how this person feels. To admit a mistake takes a growth mindset. For someone with a growth mindset mistakes are how we learn, even really stupid mistakes. One’s performance has nothing to do with who she is, it has everything to do with where she is on her journey. This isn’t easy.

After we admit a mistake, then and only then can we learn from it. The first mistake is usually not fatal. Van de Velde could have simply hit a wedge shot to get himself back in play after his drive and he would be an Open Champion. Failure to learn is what kills us. It is hard to learn when one continually makes excuses.

Finally, one must play through their mistake. There are very few mistakes in life, and certainly in finance, that cannot be overcome. Mistakes can be overcome, but mistakes cannot be undone. This is the second trap I mentioned. Some will admit their mistakes, but instead of just continuing to play the game from where they are now, they try to undo the mistake.

Van de Velde tried to undo his mistake by attempting a near impossible shot in order to end with a score of par or better. He is not alone. It is common in sports to see a basketball player turn the ball over to the other team, then try to undo it by stealing it back, only to commit a foul. In football a quarterback may take a sack one play and try to get the yards back on the next, only to throw an interception. In baseball a player drops a fly ball and then tries to make a miracle throw to undo it, only to give up extra bases. We cannot erase the mistake, but we can keep playing the game.

In finance, one cannot change the fact that he invested in a bank when he should have invested in a technology company. That cannot be undone, but we can make prudent decisions, including diversifying and not putting all our eggs in one basket. One cannot undo not having savings when needed, but she can begin to build that emergency fund while prudently dealing with her debt. We can overcome the mistake, but not by trying to undo it.

Ultimately we want our earnings to compound, not our mistakes. Try to be the wise person Albert Einstein describes who understands compounding interest. Be the one who earns it, not the one who pays it. We all make mistakes, so the next time you do, clap and don’t compound.

Warm Regards,

Managing Director

~The Power of Compounding Works in Both Directions

Have you seen what children and dogs do to furniture? My family moved into our home in 2010. Our previous house had no formal living room; the entire downstairs was three big rooms – a big kitchen, a big dining room, and a great room. Our new house had a more traditional living room and a cozy den, and when we moved in my wife was excited to finally use some of the living room furniture she had inherited from her parents. We later added two chairs from my parents.

I love our living room. Most of the furniture is antique and all of it has meaning to us. There is something cool about that, which we have largely lost in a society that now buys entire rooms of new furniture, all at once. It does, however, have one downside: nothing matches. We could fix that, as it is simply a matter of getting chairs and sofas reupholstered. We almost did it once, but a wiser, more experienced soul stopped us. She said, “You have small children and dogs, you can’t have nice things.”

I was reminded of that sage advice earlier this year. A colleague and I were enjoying a very nice dinner in Mobile, AL. If you like seafood and are ever in Mobile, you have to go to Felix’s Fish Camp Grill. We were discussing the state of the union, as it were, and the unusual turn our politics had taken. Congress had passed tax reform and the stock market was at all-time highs. We came to the conclusion that if he desired, President Trump could cruise through the rest of his term and then walk away being remembered as a successful one-term president. Vice President Pence could run for office and no matter your politics, at least we would be back to more usual candidates.

I will admit to being one of those who is still not convinced that Donald Trump ever really wanted to be president. I could be wrong, but I wonder if this all just started as a publicity stunt and then suddenly he started winning. But back to our point. You can have whatever political views you wish, but the U.S. presidency is won and lost based on the economy. Ronald Reagan did not win 49 states in 1984 because California and New York used to be “Red” states. Most people – the ones who don’t talk about politics – vote based on how they feel, and how they feel is largely based on how they are doing economically. The tax reform which had just passed is going to stimulate the economy. If Trump could avoid any disasters, things should be going well in 2020. That could give him a graceful exit, if he wants it, and set the stage for more traditional candidates to run a more traditional presidential election.

Then things ran off the rails because of tariffs and a war on international trade. This brings to the forefront important questions which many of us thought we had long since passed having to answer: Why is trade so important? Why shouldn’t we “protect” our industries by using tariffs?

The instinct to build walls against foreign products is understandable. There are few things harder on humans than change. It was hard when fewer and fewer workers were needed on the farm and many people were forced to leave their small communities to get work in the big manufacturing centers. Romanticizing the old days of rural life was an American pastime long before those manufacturing jobs started giving way to the service and information economies. Change is tough, and when it seems to be forced upon us by nameless faceless “foreigners,” it is easy to think that we can just stop it from happening by putting up barriers to trade.

Of course, hiding behind barriers is no way to face life’s challenges. We know that personally, but this is true nationally as well. We may be nostalgic for old cars, but do we really want to live in Castro’s Cuba? That is what a society who builds walls against the outside world looks like.

Those who support trade barriers often argue that we have such a large trade deficit. They fret that the trade deficit is a horrible thing – after all it is called a deficit, and deficits are by definition bad, right? Usually that is true, and in my opinion this unfortunate label causes a great deal of confusion. In fact, during the presidential campaign Trump often referred to the trade deficit in terms of us losing.

Is that really true? Having a trade deficit means that we export less than we import. In other words, we are sending the rest of the world a relatively small amount of stuff, and for that stuff they are sending us back a large amount of stuff. We are giving a little and getting a lot. Who’s winning this game again?

It is at moments like this that we mourn the loss of people like Milton Friedman, who could accurately describe economic issues in a way most everyone could understand. In 1978 he spoke on this issue. At that time, it was Japan who was the foreign disruptor instead of China. This is what Friedman had to say, “Let’s suppose, for a moment, that the Japanese flood us with steel. That will reduce employment in the American steel industry, no doubt. However, it will increase employment elsewhere in America. We will pay for that steel with dollars. What will the Japanese do with the dollars they get for the steel? They aren’t going to burn them. They aren’t going to tear them up. If they would, that would be best of all, because there’s nothing we can produce more cheaply than green pieces of paper, and if they were willing to send us steel, and just take back green pieces of paper, I can’t imagine a better deal!”

Talking about the art of the deal. If we could get steel, aluminum and everything else we need for nothing more than green pieces of paper, that would be awesome. Economists know, of course, that currency is just a convenient store of value. In truth, what we are doing is bartering. We provide the world today with most of its technology, and in return, we get the products we desire. If they take fewer things from us than we get in return, then they get to hold dollars. What are they going to do with dollars?

Have you ever taken something back to a store and all the store will give you is a store credit? It is aggravating, isn’t it? You may not wish to buy anything else in that store. What you really want is your money back so you can go anywhere. With international trade, this is the way local currency works. China takes dollars. Dollars are like store credits, they eventually have to be used here if you want your value.

Today the U.S. is the largest, most trusted “store” in all of the world. That means our store credits can be traded, because there really isn’t anyone who wouldn’t want to take them, but even if China uses those dollars to buy stuff from Brazil, what is Brazil going to do with them? Ultimately there are only two things that can be done with dollars: they are either used to purchase U.S. goods, or they are used to invest in the U.S. If we have a trade deficit, then we have a matching investment surplus. That is good for our economy.

There is a reason why trade deficits peak during economic booms and bottom during economic downturns. Of course, all we have discussed thus far is what a trade deficit is and how it really is not a bad thing. We have not mentioned the benefit of low-cost steel. Yes, this hurts the steel industry, but it helps every industry that uses steal and most importantly, it helps the consumer through lower prices. I believe this gets lost on many people, usually because of the very arguments one may have heard from the steel industry regarding these latest tariffs. “We are only adding a small amount to every car.” It is just a small amount, after the small amount that was added for the passenger air bag, and the small amount that was added for the emissions standards, etc.

Lots of government-mandated items on cars are individually desirable, and all of them add just a little cost. But, when added up, the average car now costs more than half of the average family’s total income. This is what economists call rent-seeking, and it is one of the biggest dangers of an intrusive government. Every tariff brings large benefits to a few, in our example the steel industry, and brings small injury to the many. This creates a passive majority and a very active minority, which wins the day at the expense of the majority.

In our case steel workers win and consumers lose. Who are the consumers? Everyone. That means everyone, including (ironically) the steel workers. Of course, it is noble to defend steel workers – we all love the iconic image of blue-collar, middle class America. So, let’s change our example, and instead of tariffs on steel, let’s say we are talking about bailing out banks. Suddenly this begins to look totally different. Let’s say we want to protect Wall Street bankers from the Chinese at the expense of everyone else in America. That doesn’t have the same political appeal, does it?

Benefiting a sympathetic group over the rest of us seems very different from benefiting an unsympathetic group, but in fact it is not. Our founders understood that. It wasn’t about replacing a bad king with a good one. It was about not having a king at all. It is about creating a system of checks and balances where hopefully the greater good can win out over selfish interests.

What is the greater good? Politicians like to see everyone as part of some definable group. They wish to silo us, divide and concur as it were. If they do group us together it is often as workers. This seems to be Trump’s vision; he is for the workers. Economists, on the other hand, see everyone as consumers. After all, the primary reason individuals go to work is to be able to consume. Most would choose not to work if consumption was possible without it, hence the retirement planning industry of which I am a part. If this were not the case, I would not have a job.

The irony is that most of us are workers and all of us are consumers, yet workers’ interests and consumer interests are not always aligned. When in doubt, I say do what is right for the consumer. Do what is right for everyone. The healthier the consumer, the more they will consume, and the more good jobs there will be for all of us workers. They might be in the steel industry or they might not. That should be up to the consumer to decide.

This is what we have always done at Iron Capital. Our clients are our primary concern, and the more we successfully focus on our clients (the consumers), the more we (the workers) benefit. A few years ago we changed our business model to become strictly referral-only. We do not spend an ounce of energy marketing our firm or selling our services. We focus entirely on taking care of our current client base. Once we did that, we ended up doing more new business than we had ever done in the past, because our clients are far better at selling our services than we ever were. This works for many other great businesses, and it can work for our nation as it has in the past.

Until we grow up and learn that lesson as a nation, our economy will be a lot like my living room: a place where we just can’t have nice things.